How do you spice up a news story about a non-fatal car crash in Jackson, Mississippi? By involving this guy.

The clip above is very much in the vein of those which gave Antione Dodson and Sweet Brown their 15 minutes. In this case, the witness has clearly been waiting for this moment for his entire life and clearly is beside himself at having the good fortune to be in the proximity of a car accident while en route to Burger King. I bet this guy dreams in Autotune.

“Hello, people,” he says to the people. Well hello, he’s counting on us to say back. I’m biting.

“What I seen was a horrible, tragic situation,” he recounts, his voice quivering with melodrama. Here’s a perfect example of the story being much less important than the way it’s told. In the MSNewsNow story that ran under this video, here’s how the crash was described: “The crash happened on Robinson Road at the Intersection of Eastview Street. It caused the officer’s patrol car to hit a utility pole, splitting it.”

In the witness’s words, here’s how it happened: “The officer got behind the man and started going so fast his car spinned out of control. Girl, he hit the pole.”

See? Witness’s story is better.

The witness appears to be Courtney Barnes who has appeared on So You Think You Can Dance multiple times, as recently as two episodes ago. Barnes’s eyebrows were sculpted differently on SYTYCD than the man who appears in the news clip, but both brow styles are similarly confusing.

Regarding his profile since his first appearance appearing on the show, Barnes reported, “From the bus station all the way to the funeral home, they recognize me.” Barnes is clearly the crash witness that our fame-obsessed culture deserves.

[H/T RonaldMatters]

While some people spend their days leading hiking tours of state parks or teaching algebra to our nation’s youth, others—namely the eponymous people at People magazine—spend their days coming up with reasons that Kristin Cavallari is even more stylish than we thought. (We at Defamer spend our days analyzing those reasons.)

In a recent blog post titled “9 Reasons Kristin Cavallari Is Even More Stylish Than We Thought,” People.com offers some new facts about Kristin to support its conclusion that not only is Kristin stylish, she is even more stylish than we—all seven billion* of us on Earth—thought. We’ve covered some of the reasons already in previous posts: “she’s not superstitious about her game day outfit (or meal!);” “she’s getting ready for long hair again;” “her sons are really starting to get into game day style;” “she thinks NFL fans need to get more involved with Pinterest.”

Damn, you’re probably already convinced by now that Kristin is even more stylish than we thought—but just in case, here’s one more reason:

“She’s still holding on to her first pair of Loubs.”

Kristin explains:

I’m the opposite of a hoarder—I love going in there [her closet] and getting rid of stuff. So I don’t think I have anything that’s too old. But I guess probably the first pair of Louboutins I bought when I was 18, that was a really big deal for me, to be able to afford my own pair of Louboutins. So I still have those.

O.K. What about the choker?

*This post has been corrected to reflect the fact that there are roughly seven billion Kristin fans on Earth, not six billion. 500 Days of Kristin regrets the error.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

In 2009, a strange Facebook account appeared out of nowhere and friended people en-masse. The name on the account was Junko Junsui, and she had a message for anyone willing to listen.

Thus began a strange mystery that would continue for years to come, as countless people across the internet became enamored of Junsui, her story, and the shadowy organizations she claimed were hiding in plain sight. It was never real, of course. But that doesn’t make the story any less remarkable, or make it feel less real.

First: Junko Junsui, and her Facebook account.

Some people actually accepted the seemingly random request, and, upon investigating further, found that Junko was not just a friendly Russian beauty, as her profile initially made it seem. Rather, she appeared to be a part of a weird alternate reality game involving a terrorist group called ‘The Junsui,’ Russia, and private military companies—all of which were warring with one another across the internet.

Judging from early threads following the game, many found untangling Junko Junsui’s web to be a thrill, which makes sense: the confusing premise seemed as if it was lifted straight out of a Metal Gear Solid plot. Shadowy organizations, corrupt governments, overzealous groups defined by genetic modification, a huge conspiracy: Junko Junsui delivered on all fronts. But more than that, people found the entire thing disturbing, too. One of the most notable early clues in the ARG led players to discover video clips of a woman trapped inside of a room:

According to players who discovered it, there were over twenty hours of that kind of footage floating around on the internet. Meanwhile, Junko Junsui’s Facebook page—which is now deleted—seemed adamant in its defense that it was all real. She claimed that someone from the Junsui sisterhood—the person in the footage—had been kidnapped, and they really, really wanted to get her back. None of this might seem unusual now in 2015—hell, just recently, Square Enix teased the new Deus Ex by using a Twitch stream that purported to show footage of an imprisoned man. Everyone knows the Deus Ex footage is fake. But Junko Junsui happened back in 2009. Not everyone was sure that what they were toying with was just a game.

For one thing, figures from within the game would sometimes warn of upcoming attacks that seemed to come true in real life—like this one in August 2009, where various social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter, suffered outages thanks to denial of service attacks that seemed to originate in Russia—where many of the Junko Junsui organizations were supposedly located. But, more importantly, Junko Junsui didn’t seem to work like most ARG games. If there was a “puppet master” behind it all, that person seemed particularly antagonistic toward people who participated. Junko Junsui is said to have became irate in her Facebook posts whenever people posted her communications on forums, sometimes allegedly outing anonymous participants who believed they were just playing a game. I would link to these supposed Facebook posts, but the profile is gone now—the only thing left is people on other forums commenting on Junko’s behavior:

“I have NEVER seen this type of behavior in an ARG before. EVER,” says one of the commenters in the screenshot above. “Not to sound paranoid, but wouldn’t this be insane if we were dealing with real groups and real people?”

This paranoia was, in a way, my introduction to the whole mess. On Monday, I found out about an iPad game released back in 2014 called Alfa-Arkiv. Here’s the peculiar app store description for it:

GAMES” ARE THE WEAPONS OF THE FUTURE.

Since this is a “liberated” piece of psychotronic software so we are still fixing some glitches. (^_^)

Las SGG can get you through the FIRST TWO SECURITY CLEARANCE LEVELS with no problem.

To go further you will need to make a donation to Junsui Movement of $1.99 yankee dollars.

MAKE NO MISTAKE - THIS IS JUST A GAME

“Third Roman Intelligence Directorate” is just a shell, another FICTIONAL SUBSIDIARY created by LIARS who use ALIASES.

| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

In this GAME there they have created there are THREE MAIN RULES:

1. YOU ARE A FREE AND INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL.

2. YOU MUST PURSUE WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY.

3. SHOULD ANYTHING PREVENT (1) or (2), YOU MUST DESTROY IT.

| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

It was made with the help of countless REAL PROFESSIONALS including:

• INTERNATIONAL FINANCIERS

• IT PATENT LAWYERS

• AGENT PROVOCATEURS

• PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE SPECIALISTS

• PR TECHNOLOGISTS (CONSULTANTS)

• SPONSORED POLITICIANS

• VIP HOSPITALITY HOSTESSES

• WELL-CONNECTED ARTISTS

• CELEBRITY AUTHORS

• NARCISSIST WHISTLEBLOWERS

| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

Inside the ARKIV:

WHO was JUNKO JUNSUI and WHAT really happened to THE SISTERHOOD of “BLACK WIDOWS”?

WHAT is ROSTEC and WHY has ROSKOMNADZOR not yet built a GREAT FIREWALL of RUSSIA?

WHY does SOCIAL MEDIA not reach its TRUE POTENTIAL until your CITY SQUARE is on FIRE?

HOW can TECH STARTUPS that did not exist a few years ago now be VALUED IN THE BILLIONS?

WHEN the NEW REALITY arrives, will your HAPLOGROUP or GENDER be needed?

Here is a trailer linked in the description:

It was a continuation of 2009’s unresolved Junko Junsui incident, listed on the store as created by the “Third Roman Intelligience Directorate.” Whatever that is. As you might already know, mysterious conspiracy games are totally my jam. But something seemed amiss here. Many players seemed genuinely upset by the game and its potential implications. Here’s one of Junko Junsui’s’s biggest participants, Ad_Arcana_Tutanda, warning people on an ARG forum ‘unFiction’ to stay away from the new iPad game in 2014. He claimed that the more he looked into the game’s and the more he looked up the background of the people involved with it, the more things seemed pretty damn bad to him. “Not silly haha bad,” this user wrote. “But serious bad, like [Junko Junsui’s] messaging was orchestrated with malign intent and definitely not coming from the US.”

Ad_Arcana_Tutanda noted that if Junko Junsui were indeed just an ARG, why couldn’t anyone figure out its endgame? The game had been around for years. Surely, by 2014, someone would have figured out what the point of it all was. Instead, the game simply seemed to continue and sprawl, without really shilling for any particular product, as many ARGs tend to do.

The biggest red flag for this user was that some of the figures inside of the game were actual private military companies. This person claimed that much of the information contained within the game about these organizations—like phone numbers—were actually real. In an effort to figure the game out, some players had inadvertently been in contact with real-world shadowy figures.

“Calling them is probably the least smart thing you could do,” Ad_Arcana_Tutanda warned. “At the very least, you risk wrapping a mile of bureaucratic red tape around yourself, as well as earning lifetime observation of your digital footprint.” Ad_Arcana_Tutanda seemed worried that the app was a way for the Russian government to conduct experiments on its users, as a part of some so-called “information war.”

“I am absolutely sure of this and so I take back any previous endorsement I ever gave of JJ,” Ad_Arcana_Tutanda wrote.

Ad_Arcana_Tutanda was not alone.
Here are some Reddit threads alerting people about Junko Junsui’s ‘true’ nature (expand to see in full):

(Reddit user TAPShooter, telling other that “Oksana Kareyeva,” a character within the game, was actually considered a terrorist in real life. “Not sure what anybody would want to get involved with this,” TAPShooter wrote.)

(Reddit user ObscureAllegory, telling people to exhibit caution when they didn’t know which parts of the game were actually true. “If you don’t know if something is real or not, beyond all reasonable doubt, assume that it is,” ObscureAllegory wrote. “Protect your personal info,” he advised.)

(An unknown Reddit user, warning others that people who tried to uncover the real identities of the people within the game got hit with threats—Junko Junsui allegedly told these people that the group would release player’s names, emails, and addresses.)

Proving that natural selection no longer has much effect on modern, city-dwelling humans, all of this worked toward making me MORE interested in the game, not less. I mean, sure: I felt a little bit unsettled by the idea that the game could be a front or an experiment used by a terrorist group. But, well, that’s interesting too!? So...I downloaded it. To my surprise, the game was free. I stared at its icon on my iPad for a few minutes...

...before finally working up the courage to play the damn thing:

First thing the game asked me to do was to log into a Russian military program of some sort—but in order to do that, I had to accept the terms of service. Typically, when a game asks me that, I just pretend to look at the document and click “yes” when prompted. But the internet had planted the seeds of doubt in me, so in this case I actually pored over the terms of service in search of anything suspicious. In hindsight, I don’t think there’s anything in there that is out of the ordinary. But in the moment, even innocuous things seemed a bit suspect to me:

[The terms of service, which claimed that “the experience” might “disrupt your systems or make them behave erratically.”]

Still, I agreed. That’s when I was treated to a whole mess of coding gobbledigook that made it seem like I was jacking into the Matrix, not just starting a free iPad game:

Eventually, these animations settled on the game’s main interface:

Each of those rectangles is a document, which you can peruse at your leisure simply by tapping on them. You’ll also get messages through the app about things like “unknown magical forces”:

These initial messages give you a clue about what the app actually does:

I was introduced to Raskovnik, a chatbot who told me that the app I was using was hacking into some sort of classified Russian database. “Many of the things you gonna see are real,” Raskovnik claimed. “But don’t get too scared, cuz your pal Raskovnik is here.” Raskovnik said that through this app, I’d be able to find out the truth about Rhea—who I assumed was the same woman in the videos found by people back in 2009. And finally, Raskovnik assured me that anything I did within the game was “safe.” Of course, the fact he had to assure me of that at all was not comforting.

Raskovnik then encouraged me to go back and read the documents in the app. Initially, the documents appeared blank, but when I tapped on the rectangles, I got a preview of what was contained within:

You only have access to certain documents at a time, however—tapping on anything beyond your current clearance level will give you a warning:

So, I started with the first available document. To my surprise, everything was in Russian:

See that little eye icon on the bottom right? If you tap it, the game will automatically translate any document you’re looking at into English. You can read them in full, if you’d like, but I’ve provided a summary underneath:

The documents told the story of a lady named Rhea, who got captured after a botched suicide bombing attempt. This first set of documents also included an observation video, which looks similar to the stuff floating around back in 2009:

Further documents revealed that the bombing was Rhea’s attempt at revenge: she claimed that family members had been killed, and she thought that joining a “resistance” movement would give her a way to get back at the murderers. Halfway through this forced confession, the game seemed to glitch out momentarily...

...before letting me read through the documents once more. It was startling—I was in a groove reading the logs—but I put it out of my mind. Probably just a part of the experience, right? Once I finished reading through that entry, an ominous sound started playing. I heard a lady’s voice asking me if I wanted to see her. I had no idea who the lady was, though. Not just that: the game wanted to know if I would let her see me. The game then asked me if I wanted to let my iPad use its camera:

Freaked out, I said no. Why the fuck would I want to use the camera right now, I wondered? Would it connect me to someone else? Was that someone else a real person, not a player in a game? It was a very NOPE moment, not just because I walked into the game slightly paranoid, but because it was laundry day and I felt embarrassed at the idea of letting someone see me like that. So while I didn’t get to see what would happen if I had said yes, the game still displayed something unexpected:

It’s difficult to recall what the lady was saying exactly. It seemed like vague nonsense about THE TRUTH, and I was still worried that I was meddling with something I didn’t actually understand. Once that video was finished, however, the game let me access the second tier of documents. Confession: I read each and every one of these with my finger over the iPad camera. I was worried that someone was watching me at that point, despite feeling it was probably impossible. That’s just how hooked the game had me. I didn’t know what was real, or what I could trust to be true.

These new documents let me take a closer look at Rhea’s past: supposedly, she grew up alongside sisters who were groomed to be agents that would extract information from certain suitors. Rhea told stories of seducing big oil men, doctors, and other various important men, all so that she could relay that knowledge to an organization that was in the business of having information. Getting to that point, however, required a ton of strange training inside a facility that was completely removed from actual civilization. The game suggested that Rhea and her sisters were not quite normal—many players maintain that the women were likely genetically modified somehow, which would perhaps explain details like their inability to have periods.

Much of what I was reading made it seem like this was indeed just a game. The interface seemed too clean, too deliberate, for it to be something else. And yet! When the game fed me videos like this one:

I doubted what I was looking at. Was it staged? Was the footage real? I didn’t know. What I could say with certainty is that after reaching a certain point in the game, its in-game chatbot asked me to chitchat. Here, a man in a mask once again asked me if I wanted to know the truth:

He informed that there was way more stuff I could look at, if I wanted to:

The catch? I would have to pay some money to see it.

I had to ask the obvious, if not silly question here:

But the game would not show or tell me more unless I spent money. Was this just a game that was trying to sucker me out of my cash? Why was the money going to “Raskovnik Support Fund”? That doesn’t sound like a game developer. That sounds like an organization, which so far doesn’t seem particularly legit. Would I go on some list somewhere if I donated money to this fund? Could a game like this even get past the App Store if it was ‘actually’ some front for a terrorist group? No way, right? Conflicted, I slept on it. I awoke with not with conviction, but with uncertain curiosity. I decided to take the plunge anyway. What’s the worst that could happen?

I made the purchase. The game gave me an actual login to the database time, as well as access to a number of juicy new files:

I spent hours reading through all of them. Some entries were dozens of pages long, and despite the fact I couldn’t always grok what they were about, I was fascinated. Every so often, I’d Google certain names and locations. Some were real, or at the very least had fake websites that made them look real. Yamantau, for example, was mentioned in passing—when I looked it up, it turned out to be a giant underground military complex whose purpose was unknown. According to Wikipedia, the US government has asked Russia multiple times the purpose of the facility to no avail.

Other supposed names, however, had Google coming up empty. The app also casually pointed to various websites, many of which were real and robust. The effect was that I never knew what was true and what was fake, making it easier to fall into a pit of paranoia. I wasn’t even sure how much of the game’s narrative was actually true, either. Some details didn’t quite line up with others, nor did some character’s mental state appear to be what I’d call stable. The only thing that seemed certain was that this game was really trying to fuck with me.

Eventually, the game interrupted my reading time with more stuff addressed to me, the player. The game wanted me to swear I was trustworthy—which is perhaps the most ironic thing a sketchy game like this could do.

The lady then informed me that if I wanted to continue, I would have to install a Chrome extension onto my browser.

Called ‘ALFA-CIPHER,’ this extension was hosted by none other than Wikileaks. Buying stuff in-game, that’s one thing. That seems like typical app bullshit. Installing software seemingly endorsed by an organization formed by Julian Assange, one of the most wanted men in the world? Fuck, man. I don’t know. Once again, my feeling that this was just a game wavered.

Here’s the Wikileaks page, explaining the deal with the extension.The page claimed that the extension was used by “various government and corporate intelligence services” as a means of tracking and collecting “behavioral data of opposition political and activist groups”—exactly what the unFiction user from before said.The page claimed that the extension was used to “build predictive modeling and ostensibly influence mass psychology,” and that the app provided an “effective means of gathering, communicating, and analyzing data on a chosen subject in real time.”

Apparently, Edward Snowden himself (the plot thickens!) gave WikiLeaks a “technical specification” on the extension, and members of Anonymous were said to have distributed the extension as well. The page also said that the original Junko Junsui was actually spyware, used to challenge “supporters to a complete a series of online investigations and protests.” Perhaps the most incredible claim on this page was that the app could alter “the nature, appearance, and frequency of ideological content individuals encounter online.”

Yeeeeeah. That may be the most outlandish collection of sentences I’ve seen in a long time, but I still didn’tdownload jack shit. Sure, I was probably being overly cautious, but still. I don’t want a Chrome extension I don’t understand on my computer. To my surprise, when I returned to the game, it presented me with a new option: I could pay $1 and ‘skip ahead.’ While I was not thrilled at the prospect, I ended up coughing up the dough anyway.

This allowed me to spend more hours going through more logs about the women…

To get odd transmissions from glitch lady once more:

And to hack into other people’s accounts:

Without spoiling anything, the logs are dizzying, and they often describe horrific or unsettling events. Once I started reading them, it was difficult to stop—I had to know what happened to people. I had to suss out what tales were true—because surely, some of this was true? Maybe?

When I grew tired of reading them, I dove into the dozens of older threads all around the web about people’s fruitless attempts to figure out what was actually going on, and what the purpose of Junko Junsui or ALFA-ARKIV. Nobody seemed to have an answer. It was just labyrinth after labyrinth, username after username making all sorts of connections and so-called breakthroughs on a puzzle I could barely understand. I found out, for example, what that Chrome extension actually did:

But not why anyone would want something like that in the first place. I also read hundreds of forum posts, each one presenting a new rabbit hole of links and possibilities about things mentioned in the game. I was never sure what held a real link to the game, and what was just a manifestation of my own personal internet mania. I clicked every link just the same, in the hopes that one of them could tell me what in the world was going on.

After a dozen hours of obsessing over this game, I finally came across a CNET story with the truth. I don’t know how I missed it to begin with; it was never hidden or anything like that. But I got so caught up in the original player’s obsession with the game, and the threads they were weaving while playing, that I wasn’t able to step back and really look at what I was dealing with. I would feel stupid about this, except my journey gave me a sense of what the people who originally came across the game must have felt.

“Originally, the idea was to create a sort of digital magazine,” Rob Auten, a writer on well-known games like Battlefield Hardline and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, told CNET back in December 2014. Reading that name shocked me more than anything else about this story—I actually met Auten a couple years ago at the Game Developers conference in San Francisco. We had drinks and awkwardly joked about how I had panned a game he co-wrote, Gears of War Judgment. I had casually shaken hands with the guy who would go on to create one of the most intense “games” I have ever played. It is a wonder that something as mystifying as terror can have such ordinary human origins.

In the CNET article, Auten describes a massive, secretive project helmed by himself and Patrick Marckesano that had been in the works since 2005. Originally, they hadn’t been aiming to make an ARG exactly, nor was anyone expecting it to become such an internet obsession. It just kept growing and growing into this strange art project that fascinated everyone that came across it. Even 4Chan got involved, resulting in some nastiness between players, as well as the creators of the app itself—CNET reports Marckesano got doxxed by players who were intent on finding out what the hell was going on. So the project, in its original iteration at least, was shut down—eventually leading to the new, reworked iPad app that I had been playing. The project ended up being so successful that CNET claims that one of Alfa-Arkiv’s characters, Oksana Kareyeva, got added to an actual real-life terrorist database. The game inadvertently started melting into real life in unexpected ways.

So why do all this? Why spend almost a decade creating something this bonkers; why go through the trouble of keeping it a secret for so long? Auten and Marckesano said they wanted to create something new, something that defied definition. “I don’t know that it is a game exactly, or that it’s successful as a game,” Auten said. “I don’t much care, truth be told. I do know it’s entirely unique.”

In the end, there was no grand conspiracy. There were no terrorist groups, and no shadowy government organizations. There was only a slick game that got out of hand, and players that desperately wanted to believe in something. I know this. I know the truth; I know what actually happened. But I still don’t trust my iPad camera, and I didn’t sleep that well last night.

You can try out ALFA-ARKIV yourself here, provided you have an iPad.

Contact the author at patricia@kotaku.com.

Keith Broomfield, a 36-year-old Massachusetts native, has died in combat assisting Syrian Kurdish soldiers in a skirmish against forces of the Islamic State, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Rumors of Broomfield’s death began trickling in early Wednesday morning across social media accounts allied with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, colloquially known as the YPG.

American fighter, Keith Broomfield from Massachusetts, joined YPG in February in Kobane, martyred in Qentere village. pic.twitter.com/SKQ9eVf25x

June 10, 2015

#PT YPG stmnt says Broomfield was martyred on 3rd of June 2015. YPG sends their condolences to his family, the American and Kurdish people.

June 10, 2015

A YPG spokesman told the AP that Broomfield had joined with the Kurds against ISIS in February under the pseudonym “Gelhat Raman.” A Facebook account opened in Broomfield’s name around that time includes several photos of him in Kurdish territory, but it’s possible someone else was posting updates to the account.

A State Department spokesman confirmed Broomfield’s death but did not share any details surrounding the firefight, which allegedly occurred in Qentere, around the heavily disputed Syrian area of Kobani. He is believed to be the first American who died fighting ISIS; an Australian with the YPG died about the same time Broomfield joined up, and several Americans have died fighting on ISIS’s side in the expanding conflict.

NBC News reports that Broomfield’s mother, Donna, learned of Keith’s fate from her other son:

“I didn’t want him to go but I didn’t have a choice in the matter,” she tearfully told NBC News over the phone from Westminster, Massachusetts.

She said that her son had left to fight around four months ago and that while there was “a little bit of texting” after he first arrived, lately she had heard “nothing.”

“I’m waiting for his body to come back,” she added.

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: FD97 D50A DE57 3943 4534 1A49 FA8B 74B4 A7A0 07BE

Staying abreast of Boston’s rousing Olympic spirit: only 39% of people in Massachusetts now support the idea of holding the 2024 Olympics in Boston. Fortunately, support among the Olympic Committee itself is no doubt even lower.

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

Welcome to Midweek Madness, where we throw balloons filled with pudding at the Wormers until they bring us copies of all the tabloids. This week: Jen’s divorce papers are real, Miley is losing too much weight, Kate and William are moving to AMERICA, and inTouch will never ever stop breaking Duggar news.

Grab your balloons and follow me.

“Knock Three Times” begins playing.

Star

JEN’S DIVORCE PAPERS!

Ben and Jen’s divorce is no rumor. It’s actually happening, and Star has the documents to prove it. Oh wait. Wait wait wait. The only documents in this cover story are from her divorce from Scott Foley. What? The cover says JEN’S DIVORCE PAPERS, but the papers are from some stupid divorce from some guy who was considerably more famous in 2003? And the “agreement appears amicable”? AMICABLE? I don’t read these rags for “amicable.” Shame on you, Star. Anyway, Ben has allegedly “looked at a $25M condo in NYC” and Jen is “heartbroken,” but no one knows when their ripped photo will finally appear on the cover of every magazine. My money’s still on after the 10-year. Maybe sometime in the fall? These two should bore me, but they don’t. Go figure.

Bachelorette time! Kaitlyn, this season’s woman with the roses, is apparently smitten with Nick Viall on the show, but Star’s “exclusive photos” show him hanging out with Whitney (with an h) Bischoff, Chris Soules’s ex-fiancee! Star alleges they have been “hooking up,” whatever that means these days. Sources say they were seen at a “tiny bar...leaning into each other, chatting and laughing…[Whitney] also made a point of lovingly stroking Nick’s knee while they talked.” OK! But here’s my question: do these people know there are other non-Bachelor/Bachelorette contestants to lovingly stroke on the knee? Have they forgotten that people with knees that need to be stroked exist outside of that competition? Leave that pond, you guys, and go for a swim somewhere else.

The real Jessica Simpson is a southern girl with her Levi’s on and an open heart...WHO NEEDS TO CHECK IN TO REHAB. Sources are saying Simpson is battling alcoholism and an addiction to Adderall. “Jessica has become obsessed with keeping off the pregnancy weight she gained with her son,” but “the problem is that she still likes to drink” and alcohol and Adderall do not mix well. Her friends and family “can no longer turn a blind eye to Jessica’s self-destructive antics” and are urging Eric, her husband, to check her into rehab. Take care of yourself, Jessica! Then you can go back to lyin’ in the grass just talkin’ ‘bout love.

And Also:

• Chris Pratt has an ego the size of his former bod.
• Kelly Osbourne is probably going to replace her mom on The Talk.
• Demi Moore might follow in Rumer’s footsteps and join Dancing With the Stars and Rumer is UNDERSTANDABLY PISSED.
• Iggy Azalea is probably pregnant.
• Rebel Wilson’s boyfriend is probably an asshole.
• Gaga’s wedding will probably be normal.
• Scott Disick is definitely not using condoms.

Wrong Answer:

Grade: D- (Someone opens a rival dinosaur theme park two islands away from your dinosaur theme park.)

Life & Style

AS HER WEIGHT PLUMMETS...EATING DISORDER FEARS FOR MILEY

Miley Cyrus’s friends are “concerned” about her health now that the “5-foot-5 singer appears to be wasting away.” Life & Style says the “recommended weight range for someone Miley’s height is 119 pounds to 149 pounds,” and Miley only weighs 99. She goes “days without eating any real, solid food” and instead just eats “Twiz bars and jelly beans” - causing her “bones [to jut out.]” Friends say it’s because of her recent breakup, and a “nutrition expert” named Dr. Fred Pescatore says she “needs to eat more.” (I wonder if he has a book called The Pescatorian Diet.) Anyway, back to Miley. Friends and family (even Billy Ray) are worried, but she is not.

The Duggars get everything free! The family—estimated to be worth $5M—has been able to afford so many things because most of it is comped! All those weddings for all those children were free because of sponsors, their home was mostly free after help from Discovery, their trips are “likely” paid for by TLC, and all their appliances were donated. But all that will probably end soon. Yep. No more free stuff for the Duggars anymore.

Kim Kardashian, currently pregnant with a boy or twins or triplets or a baker’s dozen, is being “tortured by Kanye’s fashion demands.” An insider says “he has no clue how uncomfortable she is” in the clothes he forces her to wear, and “thinks he’s a style genius.” Even though Kim’s feet hurt, he won’t allow her to wear sneakers. Even though she’s bloating, all her clothes must be formfitting. Imagine Kim’s water breaking or mucus plug poppin’ open and Kanye looking at her pants saying, “You’d better change before we go to the hospital or I’m not driving you.”

And Also:

• Who-lebrity Divorce Alert: Mike Shouhed and Jessica Parido are “calling it quits!”
• Who-lebrity Divorce Alert: Scheana Marie kicked Mike Shay out of their house!
• Ryan Gosling “can’t stand” George Clooney.
• Anna Faris drank Fiji water in public.
• Robert Pattinson invited Kristen Stewart to his wedding to FKA Twigs.
• Rihanna’s dating an athlete. “Oh na na, what’s the game,” you ask? Soccer.
• Wear “leafy green” prints or I will force you to eat pounds and pounds of leafy greens...without dressing.
• If you don’t wear colorful stripes this week I will buy you a ticket to Jurassic World (the park, not the movie) and set the pterodactyls loose.

Wrong Answer:

Grade: F (The rival dinosaur theme park starts serving Dippin Dots, and yours doesn’t even serve present-day ice cream.)

OK!

KATE & WILLIAM MOVING TO AMERICA! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Kate and William rented a “massive Hamptons estate” for the summer! Can you believe it? It’ll be like Grey Gardens, only with more babies and weirder accents. The family is apparently “househunting,” and their extended family is furious. A source says “the Queen is not happy at all, and that’s putting it mildly.” Though, to be fair, I doubt the Queen is ever happy about anything. If you told me the last time the Queen was happy was in 1964, I would believe you. God, I hope this is true. If only because it would give Kelly so many amazing content opportunities this summer.

Scott Disick had sex with a stripper in Scottsdale, Arizona, didn’t use a condom, got her pregnant, and now he’s freaking the hell out. Insiders say “After spending a mere 30 minutes at [a strip club], Scott invited his newly recruited harem back to his suite at the W Hotel in Scottsdale” and got her pregnant. OK even managed to get a photo of the alleged “baby mama”:

This is a very good issue.

And Also:

• Kim Richards is leaving RHOBH for good.
• Amal Clooney hired a stylist.
• Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx’s relationship is “finally getting serious.”
• Jennifer Aniston is lonely as hell.
• Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden are so in love that they’ve “put on weight.”
• Tony Danza rollerbladed through Central Park.
• Bradley Cooper’s mother HATES his new girlfriend. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Grade C+ (The raptors escape at your rival’s dinosaur park. People die, so it’s a tragedy, but your attendance goes up.)

Duggar Weekly inTouch

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: DUGGARS UNDER NEW INVESTIGATION

The best part of this week’s inTouch Duggar story, if there is one, is the lead image. Layered on top of a photo of the family is a screengrab of a Washington Post headline that reads: “To get the Josh Duggar story, InTouch utilized solid investigative journalism.” A not-so-subtle reminder that they did some actual reporting and broke a legitimate news story. The rest of the story is as dreary as the rest of the Duggar coverage we’ve grown accustomed to over the past few weeks. InTouch “exclusively obtained audio of” a 911 call from May 27 in which an investigator Department of Human Services wanted the police to check on “the welfare of a minor child.” It’s unclear why, but I’m sure we’ll know the full details soon.

Moving on, Tom Cruise is in looooooovvvvvvvvvvve! The lucky (unlucky?) lady is Lola Kirke (who?) - his “20-something” costar in the upcoming film Mena (what?). A pal says “he’s already sizing her up to be wife No. 4!” Reasons to believe the pal:

• “One day, he walked up behind her and was caressing her back.”
• “They had a long conversation [after she smiled at him].”
• “She’s told others on the production how handsome and invigorating she finds Tom.”
• “She can’t help but be attracted to him [despite hearing] Scientology stories.”

Meanwhile:

Interview Response of the Week: Jerry Ferrara

“It Me” of the Week:

And Also:

• Brangelina might be over.
• Rihanna might be in love.
• Scott Disick might be drunk right now.
• Jessica Simpson might be drunk and on Adderall right now.
• Brandy Norwood might be watching herself on YouTube right now.
• Scott Eastwood might not own a shirt.

Wrong Answer:

Grade: D- (Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, and their children vacation at your dinosaur theme park.)

Appendix:

Fig. 1: Star

Fig. 2: Life & Style

Fig. 3: InTouch

Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.

Bad news: British banjo players Mumford & Sons are riiiiiich. You probably knew this intuitively, but it’s nice—or the opposite of nice?—to be reminded of how much money some people have, compared to the rest of the people. Look at this fool’s apartment.

The home you see below (via the real estate blog 6sqft) is in New York’s “Nolita” neighborhood (named after it famously banned Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita from its streets). It belongs to Winston Marshall, a Mumford who, it turns out, isn’t even a Mumford at all. He plays banjo.

The apartment has wood floors and large windows. Better than large floors and wood windows. Though it also has large floors:

Here is the kitchen, from which Marshall will serve Nolita’s finest authentic cuisine (pizza that costs $25):

I have literally no idea what this photo is showing:

The bedroom has a bed and two chairs: one for Marshall, and one for his life partner, which is a banjo. They can sit together here as the sun goes down and gaze out onto the side of a building.

Here lies a man who has over three million dollars.

[top image via Getty, apartment images via 6sqft]

The attorney for disgraced former McKinney police officer Eric Casebolt said today that her client “never intended to mistreat” anyone and “regrets that his conduct portrayed him and his department in a negative light.”

Jane Bushkin said Casebolt violently detained a 15-year-old girl and pointed his service weapon at several unarmed black teenagers because he was distressed after responding to two suicide calls earlier in the day. From NBC News:

She said Casebolt was working a evening shift that began with a call to an apartment complex where a man had shot himself in the head in front of his family. Casebolt helped officers take witness statements, photographed the body and consoled the man’s wife, Bushkin said.

From there, Casebolt responded to a report of a teenaged girl threatening to jump off her parents’ roof, Bushkin said. He calmed the girl down and made sure she was taken to the hospital, she said.

“With all that had happened that day, he allowed his emotions to get the better of him,” she said, according to Reuters. “The video everyone has seen only depicts a small part of Eric’s actions that day.”

Casebolt resigned yesterday, three days after video of his brutal treatment of black teenagers at a McKinney, Texas, pool was published on YouTube.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Reddit, a 10-year-old internet community with 3.3 million users, somehow just got around to announcing an anti-harassment policy last month. Now the site, which usually leaves moderation decisions up to the community, has taken its first stab at banning pernicious subreddits under the new rules. Five subreddits have been shuttered by reddit admins “based on their harassment of individuals,” the Reddit team announced Wednesday.

“The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate,” the admins note. The others were r/hamplanethatred (3071 subscribers), r/transfags (149), r/neofag (1239) and r/shitniggerssay (219).

Presumably, these subreddits were shut down as a result of reports from users that they were harassing individuals, per the new policy. Archived versions of the subs show numerous posts mocking people for being fat, trans, black, or members of the video game forum NeoGAF (which redditors apparently believe has been taken over by the menace of liberal “Social Justice Warriors”).

“We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment,” the admins wrote, explaining their philosophy regarding banning.

And this really is as little as possible. When the harassment rules were first announced, my colleague Ashley Feinberg asked Reddit, “If the rules do apply to specific subreddits, will Reddit be taking any steps to ensure that they don’t simply restart in another form?”

It looks like the answer is no. FatPeopleHate, the most popular of the banned five, has apparently had an offshoot called FatPeopleHate2 for more than a year. It’s still active, and getting more attention than ever after the bannings.

And while this handful of five relatively small subreddits is gone (or at least forced to restart under new names), they barely scratch the surface of the virulent shit that thrives on reddit. Blatant hate subs like the anti-black /r/CoonTown (10,000+ subscribers) still exist because, as a Reddit spokesperson told us last month, “Views we disagree with or find offensive will not be affected.”

While Reddit remains committed to protecting users’ freedom to call people “nigger,” “ape,” and “coon,” that’s not good enough for the site’s fans of Real Free Speech, who are bailing for unregulated Reddit clone Voat.co now that harassment is (kind of, sort of, maybe) not allowed. (Voat has been around for months now, welcoming ex-redditors fleeing Reddit’s alleged conspiracy of leftist-Zionist Social Justice Warrior moderators).

Starting to crack down on harassment has positioned Reddit in an awkward middle ground—too Coontown for the mainstream, too moderated-even-the-tiniest-little bit for those who cry censorship because a company (remember, Reddit is a business) won’t give their No Fatties club a place to meet.

It remains to be seen whether the results of this experiment push Reddit to turn back or keep cleaning house.

Waging jihad from a concrete compound with only three of your wives gets lonely. Thank God for “fairly extensive” video collections of porn, which Osama bin Laden allegedly had, and which may or may not now be in U.S. intelligence hands. But you’ll never know, because Uncle Sam’s sticky fingers aren’t sharing.

David Covucci, an editor for BroBible.com who recently fucked a bunch of Japanese sex toys, decided the allegations about Osama’s oh-face collection were worth exploring, so he sent the Central Intelligence Agency a Freedom of Information Act request to release the Al Qaeda porn kraken:

[FOIA]’s a pretty powerful tool for journalists and Bros alike. I personally believe us dudes have a right to know what the world’s most wanted man masturbated to. I think something like that should enter the public record. Like… what if it turned out he exclusively watched white, male, American porn stars? Wouldn’t that be anathema to his beliefs? Wouldn’t that be an interesting thing to learn about the man?

Yes.

So, I sent the request.

On Monday, Covucci received a response from the CIA. “UNFORTCH, the contents contained within were disappointing,” he wrote. “I figured it would be, the letter a single sheet thin, like a college rejection note”:

With regard to the pornographic material Osama Bin Laden had in his possession at the time of his death, responsive records, should they exist, would be contained in the operational files. The CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C 431, as amended, exempts CIA operational files from search, review, publication, and disclosure requirements of the FOIA. To the extent that this material exists, the CIA would be prohibited by 18 USC Section 1461 from mailing obscene matter.

In summary: OBL may have been a porn dog, and he may not have been—but if he was, there’s secrets in them thar Brazzers WEBMs, so no, you can’t have ’em.

Citing the U.S.’s law against obscene mailings was sort of a bizarre tack by the CIA, however; dating back to the 1870s, the code once applied to materials as diverse as nudie pics and birth-control ads. But enforcement has caught up somewhat, and run-of-the-mill porn pics and videos have been exempted from “obscenity” restrictions by the Supreme Court since Jenkins v. Georgia in 1974. Nowadays, the only porn you can face prosecution for mailing is “public portrayal of hard core sexual conduct for its own sake, and for the ensuing commercial gain.”

So... is the CIA slyly suggesting Casa d’Osama had some hardcore fetishes?

[Photo credit: David Covucci]

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: FD97 D50A DE57 3943 4534 1A49 FA8B 74B4 A7A0 07BE

Imagine your worst vacation. Wait—Imagine your best vacation. What you are now imagining is, the worst vacation a wealthy celebrity could possibly take with other celebrities. Now imagine Gwyneth Paltrow there. If you did this correctly, you have just imagined Jennifer Lawrence’s upcoming vacation.

Gwyneth Paltrow is planning a couples’ vacation, allegedly. A couples vacation that will include:

• Gwyneth Paltrow
  
• Gwyneth Paltrow’s boyfriend Brad Falchuk
  

A couples’ vacation that will also include:

• Gwyneth Paltrow’s ex-husband Chris Martin
  

And also it will include:

• Gwyneth Paltrow’s ex-husband Chris Martin’s girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence
  

And also:

• Apple and Moses (human children)
  

From Radar:

“Gwyneth recognizes it’s time for Jen to meet the whole family, and she wants Chris to be there for Brad’s first proper bonding experience with the children.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! More from Radar:

“The plan is to spend a week together in Hawaii, as soon as all their schedules permit, but definitely before the end of summer.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Even more from Radar:

“Poor Jen is dreading it,” the source revealed. But despite letting the kids eat forbidden french fries after his split with Goopy Gwyn, the source insists that [Chris Martin] is still willing to do things Paltrow’s way. “Chris is still spellbound by Gwyneth and her rules, so he’s insisting on it.”

Imagine. A vacation to bond with your hella old boyfriend’s ex-wife and children, while his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is doing the same. While spending your days in a tiny island chain where everything costs 1000% more than it does back home.

Truly:

Image via Getty. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

“It’s dry. Very dry. Oh, God, it’s too dry. It’s raining! Rain! More rain? Ahh, tornado! Whew, back to rain. Too much rain! Make it stop! Ah, sun.” Thus continues the dramatic play that’s been the weather over the central United States for the past few months, with many more inches of rain on the way over the next seven days.

Last month, the south-central part of the country (mostly focused around Texas and Oklahoma) were plagued with a conga line of stalled supercells that produced incredible amounts of rain in short order. Some locations—like Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in Texas and the towns of Lawton and Ardmore up in Oklahoma—have never before recorded this much rain through June 10, and just about everyone is above average and out of their years-long drought (for now, anyway).

This messy map below shows observed precipitation over the past 60 days, showing a bullseye of heavy rainfall targeting Texas, Oklahoma, and western parts of Arkansas, with heavy rain tapering off farther away from the region like a ripple in the floodwaters.

The rain and flooding was so extreme that the tornado shelters people installed in their yards and garages around Oklahoma City started popping out of the ground from the force of the water beneath—a result of poor installation, but striking imagery nonetheless. In a separate incident, Houston’s suburbs saw ten inches of rain one night, creating apocalyptic scenes that stranded dozens (if not hundreds) of people who didn’t have a chance to escape the rising waters.

Thankfully for the waterlogged among us, the heavy rain should fall a bit farther north this time around, dousing communities from the Texas Panhandle straight through eastern Canada with several inches of rain through the middle of next week. The Weather Prediction Center expects a range of three or more inches of rain over a good chunk of the heart of the country, with greater totals in the strongest thunderstorms. If you’re in the area and take a look at your local forecast, there’s a decent (50% or greater) chance of thunderstorms every day for the entire length of the forecast.

Even though almost all of Texas and Oklahoma are no longer in drought, there are pockets of unusual dryness scattered throughout the Plains and Midwest; many of the areas slipping into drought, such as northeastern Nebraska and southeastern South Dakota, should begin to feel some relief if the predictions pan out.

Flash flood watches are already in place across some portions of the northern Plains and Midwest in anticipation of the heavy rainfall, with widespread flash flood watches in effect across the Rockies thanks to above-average tropical moisture pumping into the region thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Blanca. These watches will likely be expanded as we creep closer to the weekend—the latest flash flood guidance indicates that it would only take 1.50-2.50 inches of rain in a three-hour period to produce flash flooding for a stretch of land from Kansas through Wisconsin, so the anticipated storms could (and probably will) cause some flooding.

But, hey, a few days of heavy rain is better than what the area was going through around this time last year.

[Images: author]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Deadspin AMERICA BEAT GERMANY, WE ARE GIANT KILLERS, WHO WANTS NEXT, HUH?! | io9 A Scientist Responds... To Deep Impact | Jalopnik The Space Shuttle’s Military Launch Complex In California That Never Was | Jezebel This Week In Tabloids: Kate and William Are Moving To America!!!!!!!!! | Kinja Popular Posts

Happy 14th birthday, Sasha.

Image via Getty. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

If Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell, the woman who allegedly helped convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from a maximum security prison, thought she was going to get through this ordeal without some tea being spilled, her ex-coworker Nancy Hewitt wants her to know that she has another thing coming.

Hewitt is identified as a “former work colleague” in a Daily Mail exposé on Mitchell. The paper does not reveal where the two once worked together, but it’s clear that Hewitt has been waiting for years for some shit to go down.

“She was always a troublemaker,” said former work colleague Nancy Hewitt. “She was quiet, up to a point, but she would always be the one who would be trying to get other people into trouble.”

Hahaha. Tell it, girl.

“I know for a fact that a friend of mine who works at the prison told the authorities there not to hire her because she’d cause trouble — but they did, and now look what’s happened.”

Nancy Hewitt knows for a fact that her friend tried to warn you, and now... look... what’s... happened.

Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell fell in love with a prisoner with a huge dick. I respect that and love it. But at the end of the day, I’m Team Nancy.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Corpulent coke rapper Rick Ross, who’s made millions off tales of moving weight, was arrested outside of Atlanta on Wednesday after officers allegedly found a “misdemeanor amount” of marijuana in his car, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, police had stopped Ross’ Bentley for a possible window tint violation when a deputy smelled marijuana. From CNN:

Sheriff Barry H. Babb said Ross gave consent to search the vehicle, and a deputy found marijuana.

Ross, whose real name is William Leonard Roberts II, is being booked into the Fayette County jail.

A bond amount will be set by the court and Ross will answer to the charges at a later date, Babb told CNN.

Ross was also reportedly issued a citation for his windows, despite the rapper’s claim of “no tints on that pretty-ass Bentley.”

[Image via Getty Images]

Just one week after a powerful Hurricane Blanca stared down Cabo San Lucas with the steely gaze of its eye, a burgeoning tropical system in the eastern Pacific could threaten another major tourist destination: Acapulco, Mexico. A newly-developed tropical depression is expected to become a hurricane as it comes dangerously close to the city this weekend.

Early this evening, the National Hurricane Center declared a swirling mass of clouds off the southern Mexico coast Tropical Depression Three-E, a system with 35 MPH winds centered about 300 miles southeast of Acapulco. Tropical depressions are numbered in chronological order, and the “E” stands for “Eastern Pacific,” differentiating it from tropical depressions that form in the Atlantic. Once the system becomes a tropical storm, which is likely later tonight or early tomorrow morning, it will be named Carlos.

The storm is extremely healthy looking on satellite imagery; this tropical depression looks healthier than some hurricanes, with the swirling and banding you’d expect to see in a much more developed tropical systems.

Since the storm has the potential to threaten millions of people—thousands of whom are tourists from other countries—the exact track of the storm is key in how great its impacts will be to both land and humanity. Nothing comes easy, and this forecast appears to follow that trend—that nasty left-hand turn in Future Carlos’ track is key in determining the storm’s impacts.

A ridge of high pressure is sitting to the north of the system, and the strength and placement of the ridge will determine if, when, and how much the storm will turn towards the west/northwest. As noted in the National Hurricane Center’s forecast discussion, some of the models (including the Euro) turn Future Carlos to the west earlier, minimizing impacts to land, while the GFS tends to bring Future Carlos almost to landfall while it parallels the coast.

Fun!

Don’t just focus on the track of the eye itself—the winds, rain, and other impacts often extend hundreds of miles away from the center of the storm. In fact, if that initial NHC forecast verifies, the center’s track would put the right-front quadrant of the eyewall (the nasty part) very near or right over Acapulco.

If it comes close enough to affect land, the greatest impacts will be heavy rain, flash flooding, and mudslides, with high surf and rip currents coming in a close second. Even if the storm stays far enough away from land that it’s barely a nuisance, the threat for rip currents is an ever-present danger with offshore storms.

Since the storm is still a couple of days away from any major impacts on land, it would be wise for you to monitor the forecasts in the coming days and prepare for changes in your travel plans if you’re heading south (or already there and coming back home) over the next week or so. Pay attention to forecasts and listen to local authorities if they give the order to evacuate or take other actions to keep you safe.

The National Hurricane Center issues forecasts (or “advisories”) every six hours, so the next advisory will go up at 11:00 PM EDT (8:00 PM PDT) this evening. Once the storm comes close enough to land, they’ll start issuing advisories and updates every three hours.

[Image: author]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

On Wednesday, authorities announced that big-dicked killer Richard Matt and his accomplice David Sweat (a killer whose dick is of indeterminate size) may have penetrated the border into Vermont, CNN reports.

“We have information that suggests they thought New York was going to be hot,” Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin said at news conference today, “and Vermont was going to be cooler in terms of law enforcement.”

However, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo graciously suggested Vermont was plenty hot itself, telling reporters the state was “engaged” and working “hand in glove” to grab the killers.

According to New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico, there is no “hard information” that the men have entered Vermont, but state officials say they’re ready and willing to handle the escaped murderers and their (at least) one big dick.

“Should there be a need,” said Vermont’s Commissioner of Public Safety, “we are on call with fresh bodies.”

[Image via AP Images]

1943? 2013? 2015? Recently a set of black and white photos published in a BuzzFeed post titled “Black And White Photos Of The Tony Awards That’ll Make You Question What Year It Is” made us question what year it was. These black and white photos will do the same. They will make you wonder: What year is it?

What year is it?

What year is it?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. “What year is it?” is four words.

Technically this photo is worth “What year is it?” 250 times.

What year is it?

Look at this photo and think, “What year is it?”

My head is spinning with regard to the year.

Am I crazy, or what year is it?

What about now?

And now?

What year is it?

What?

Year?

Is?

It?

Still stumped?

Here’s a hint:

Yup—it’s 2015, baby.

Image via Shutterstock, Getty, Flickr. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Several doctors who treated Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz before he intentionally crashed Flight 9525 in March felt he was unfit to fly but were unable to inform the airline of their findings because of German privacy laws, according to the French prosecutor leading the investigation into the tragedy.

The Associated Press reports that Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters at a press conference today that Lubitz visited seven doctors in the weeks before the crash. Some of those doctors felt the pilot was unstable but “that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements,” according to Robin. The AP reports that “doctors risk prison if they disclose information about their patients to anyone unless there is evidence they intend to commit a serious crime or harm themselves.”

Robin also said Lubitz had seen 41 doctors over the past five years, and that he suffered from vision problems and feared blindness. From Sky News:

Lubitz saw things 30% darker than normal and also experienced bright flashes, reporters were told.

Doctors could not establish whether or not his condition was psychosomatic.

The 27-year-old pilot locked his captain out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the Germanwings flight into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

Image via AP. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.